'Truant Officer' Knows The Truth - Drug Problem Touches Us All

February 12, 1989|By Don Boyett, Seminole County Editor

Bob Thomas furrowed his brow and expressed a fear that has been haunting him: ''Unless a solution is found to the drug problem, and soon, we are going to be forced into doing some things that this society thought it could never do; things that are not what a free society is about.

''I don't like it,'' continued the Sanford city commissioner, ''and I never thought I would advocate it; but if we are to preserve civilized society we will be forced to take very drastic steps. Some rights we cherish will have to be violated.''

The drug problem is a national disgrace and has reached out to touch every hamlet, and, directly or indirectly, every person: It is the engine behind most of the crime. It's treatment pushes up the cost of health insurance for all of us. The cost of fighting its trade soars in the billions, eating tax dollars.

Yet it continues to grow.

Like most national issues, drugs are a local problem; and the ultimate solution will come from that level, not state, not national: Like fire ant control, a national policy can help organize the fight, but erradication comes only with stamping out individual anthills.

Over the next several weeks I will be using this space to dicuss the local drug problem. How it touches all our lives, what is being done and how effective the fight is; what it is doing to our society.

You are invited to participate. Write us with your own suggestions and opinions, perhaps even your own personal story of how drugs have invaded your life and changed it. Send them to the Casselberry bureau (the address is elsewhere on this page) and they will be considered for publication.

Thomas is in a better position than most to know the severity of the problem. Back when he and I were growing up, he would have been called a ''truant officer.'' Nowadays, the title has five or six words with a slash or two, but the job is the same: Getting and keeping kids in the classroom.

And his biggest hurdle is drugs: Not just the effect on users, but, increasingly, the attraction of young people who choose to retail drugs. The latter was driven home to him not long ago when a truant youth he confronted in one of the Sanford public housing projects responed with, ''Hey, man. I make more money than you.''

When Thomas talks of kids selling drugs he's not referring to those peddling occasional joints or bags from their school lockers. He's talking about kids who have left school and are plying their trade full time.

In Seminole County, he says, they number in the hundreds.

And why not? he asks.

While eschewing any excuse making, he notes that these kids see the big pusher come into their neighborhood, driving a big car, a woman on each arm, and gold around his neck. The kid probably is from a single-parent home where the source of the next meal is not certain. The message is clear: A road out of poverty.

That's no excuse, says Thomas, just a fact we must face. He hasn't the solution; only that the law must become more strict with both the pusher and user.

The messages to youth are mixed: We teach students to say ''no'' to drugs, then they pick up the newspaper to see that Dwight Gooden is the highest paid baseball player ever. Only last year, they recall, he admitted to using cocaine.

Almost daily, Thomas sees the effects of drugs on our society and reads of its invasion into every crevice. He worries whether, because of drugs, this nation could wage a successful conventional war with the Soviets, and, on the local level, how much longer we can afford the cost drugs are laying on our society.

Clearly, the solution is not simple. But it is past time the problem is left to others. It touches us all.